Tuesday, October 24, 2006

some more serious stuff

Firstly, if you're interested in taking action re climate change, sign this petition at GetUp.org.au. They're after 250,000 signatures 'to show our elected representatives we're serious'. By signing it you're simply saying "I want my government to take sweeping action to dramatically cut greenhouse pollution, shift to clean energy and solve the climate crisis now." It looks good. Do it. It takes two seconds.

Secondly, I've been doing a bit of rummaging around the Forums and Guidelines of Flickr, and there's some interesting rules that you might not be aware of:

1) "...Flickr is for photos. With some exceptions, it's OK to post other images, but if the majority of your photostream contains content other than photographs (like illustrations, screenshots, diagrams, etc.) it's very likely that your account will be marked Not in Public Site Areas (NIPSA). NIPSA means your photos won't show up in photo searches, but they will still be visible in your pages, your groups and contacts."

I did a bit more research into this, and found that even taking photographs of your art/craft isn't deemed proper use either, and could also cause your site to be marked NIPSA.

2) "Flickr is for personal use only. If you sell products, services or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account."

This seemed like a bit of a vague umbrella statement, so I did some more research into this also. Turns out it's okay to link to your shop in your profile, but it's not ok to have links to your shop within the CAPTION of your photos. I couldn't get an 100% straight answer on this one, but I'd recommend not even mentioning your shop in the caption. Saying "available in my shop" is going to look very much like you're using Flickr as a sort of catalogue, especially if lots of your photos say this.

Interested to hear if anybody else has a different take on these, or know of some more subtle "no-no's".

I know, it does seem pretty picky. And if you put a hand or foot in the photo I bet that wont make a difference. Because the main subject matter is another form of artwork, rather than the photo itself being the artwork (that's my inetrpretation). I suppose if you took arty photos of your work then that'd be ok ;)